Wimbledon will pay out a record £64.2m in prize money at this year’s Championships, a 20% increase on 2025, with the men’s and women’s singles champions each banking £3.6m. The All England Club confirmed the figures on Thursday, eight days before main-draw action begins at SW19 on 29 June, addressing — though not resolving — a long-running dispute with players who have demanded a greater share of grand slam revenue.
The £3.6m cheque for each singles winner represents a £600,000 jump on Carlos Alcaraz and Barbora Krejcikova’s payouts in 2025. First-round losers in the singles draws will receive £66,000, up from £60,000, while qualifying competitors and doubles players see the steepest percentage rises as the club attempts to address criticism that prize money is disproportionately weighted toward the latter rounds.
Where the money goes
The headline figure of £64.2m is a 73% increase on the £37.1m distributed at the 2019 Championships, the last edition before the pandemic disrupted the tour. Singles runners-up will receive £1.8m, semi-finalists £930,000 and quarter-finalists £475,000. Players reaching the third round bank £152,000, with second-round losers earning £99,000.
Outside the singles, men’s and women’s doubles champions will share £680,000, a 14% rise, while mixed doubles winners will collect £135,000. Qualifying rounds — long the focus of player complaints — have seen the largest percentage boosts: first-round qualifying losers will now receive £18,750, an increase of 25%, while those who reach the final qualifying round will earn £43,500.
All England Club chair Deborah Jevans framed the increases as part of a broader commitment. “We have listened carefully to what players have told us about the financial pressures facing those competing on tour, particularly those outside the top 100,” she said. “These increases reflect our determination to support the playing group at every level of the draw.”
A row that won’t go away
The announcement lands against the backdrop of a coordinated push from the top of the men’s and women’s games for grand slam prize money to be calculated as a fixed percentage of tournament revenue. In a letter sent to the four majors earlier this year, signed by 20 of the world’s leading players including Alcaraz, Iga Swiatek and Jannik Sinner, the group argued that prize money currently represents around 15-20% of slam revenue — well below the 35-50% share players receive in major US team sports.
The Professional Tennis Players Association, co-founded by Novak Djokovic in 2020, has gone further still, filing an antitrust lawsuit in March against the ATP, WTA, ITF and the International Tennis Integrity Agency. The suit claims tennis’s governing bodies operate as a cartel that suppresses player earnings, and specifically cites the grand slams’ refusal to engage on revenue-sharing.
Wimbledon’s response — a 20% uplift across the board — outpaces the Australian Open’s 11.6% increase for 2026 and matches the percentage rise announced by Roland Garros in May. But it stops well short of the structural change the players have been seeking.
What it means going forward
- Wimbledon’s £64.2m pool now exceeds the Australian Open’s prize fund (£60.5m at current exchange rates) and sits behind only the US Open, which paid out $90m (£71m) in 2025.
- The £3.6m winner’s cheque is the largest in Wimbledon’s history but still trails the $5m (£3.94m) collected by the 2025 US Open singles champions.
- Qualifying and early-round increases are designed to address a specific complaint: that players ranked 100-250, who rely on slam paydays to fund a tour season, have not benefited proportionately from prize money growth at the top.
For the All England Club, balancing player demands against the economics of a 14-day tournament held on grass courts at a members’ club in south-west London remains a delicate exercise. Total Championships revenue in 2024 was reported at £406m, with prize money therefore accounting for roughly 16% under the new figures — still inside the band the players’ letter identifies as inadequate.
The PTPA litigation is unlikely to be resolved before the next round of grand slam prize money announcements in early 2027, meaning Wimbledon’s increase is a holding measure rather than a settlement. Alcaraz, who beat Sinner in five sets to defend his title in 2025, has named Wimbledon as his priority for the summer. He will defend a title that is now worth £600,000 more than the one he won twelve months ago — and a great deal less than he, and his peers, believe it should be.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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